See, that's the beginning of the problem. What installer to use? Why
isn't there a standard one that "just works"? I've tried the woody
net-install, the sarge net-install, and libranet. The libranet install
broke after I changed the repositories to sarge and tried to upgrade.
Yes, probably shouldn't have done that, but the "correct way" was
certainly not clear.

In order to have an up-to-date system, you risk instability (with the
testing or unstable tree), or must resort to 3rd party "backports".

Debian-testing in my experience, has proven much more stable over the
years than, say, Mandrakelinux, Fedora, or (in its day) Red Hat 7.x-9.
Perhaps you can describe the ways in which your experience has differed.

I find Fedora 3 to be very stable and usable "out of the box".

Just my view. Maybe I've never given it a fair chance since every
install I've tried has failed.

Wait, now I'm confused. Was the experience that your claim about
"risk[ing] instability" was based on gained using machines that _other_
people installed, then? Or were you speaking from zero experience?

Yes, I admit I have "epsilon" experience, where epsilon is some small
but finite number (bad engineering joke). I'm mostly going by all the
"debian is broke" traffic that I see go by on this list.